ON BASEBALL; Despite Signs of Slippage, Braves Have Upper Hand

After the Mets shocked the Atlanta Braves with their incredible 10-run comeback Friday night and their early assault on Greg Maddux Saturday, some of their fans created The Fantasy. The Mets would win again yesterday, supplant the Braves in first place by two-hundredths of a percentage point and never look back.

As if they were pricking a balloon with a pin, the Braves shattered The Fantasy. By perpetrating a battering of their own, the Braves retained their lead in the National League East and served notice that they were not prepared to participate in a changing of the guard just yet. The Mets will have to work harder to deprive the Braves of their ninth consecutive division championship.

''I know it's a reality and probably makes more sense than not,'' John Schuerholz, the Braves' general manager, said, addressing the possibility of the streak ending. ''Who would ever imagine a string this long occurring in this environment. If it was that easy, a lot of clubs would have done it, at least a couple others. I'm not saying as a result of how we're struggling that I think it will end; I don't believe that. I think we're still as strong as you need to be to win our division. But that's a reasonable assumption to make, that some day this remarkable streak will end. I'm just not prepared to concede that right now.''

A look at recent history:

On the morning of Aug. 22 last year, with only six weeks to play, the Mets were in first place, leading the Braves by the same two-hundredths of a percentage point that would have served as a lead had they won yesterday. Later that day, the Mets won the first game of a doubleheader with St. Louis. But Billy Taylor and Chuck McElroy combined to botch the second game, and with the Braves beating San Diego, the Mets' ephemeral tenure at the top evaporated.

They would lose five of six games with the Braves the following month, and they would be left to scamper for the playoffs as a wild-card team.

Until they demonstrate otherwise, the Mets are in that position again this season. If they believe the Braves are vulnerable, perhaps because the game's most vaunted pitching staff has developed creaks and cracks, they need only to look within to see similar shortcomings of their own.

Mike Piazza, perhaps the league's most valuable player the first half of the season, shunned a long-term view of the season in favor of focusing on a positive development in the four-game series just concluded, the last-game loss notwithstanding.

Discussing the Mets' experience with the Braves the past couple of seasons, Piazza said: ''Since I've been here, we just haven't been able to get over a hump against them during the regular season. It wasn't a goal to come in and establish that we can beat this ball club. We just wanted to come in and play them better during the regular season. Now we don't have to feel we have to press against them. I think that's what we've done in the past. We've come out and played tight. Now maybe psychologically we don't have to feel we have to get a monkey off our back.''

The Braves were genuinely jolted by developments Friday night and in the Saturday carryover. Not that another loss yesterday would have sent them screaming out of Shea Stadium, but winning was better.

''Today, we were going to go home tied or we were going to go home two games up,'' said Tom Glavine, who limited the upstart Mets to two runs and five hits in seven innings. ''We didn't want to go home tied. From that standpoint, it was a big game for us. But it's still way too early to get overly excited about what did or didn't happen. We're just at the halfway point of the season.''

Glavine had the Mets shut out on two singles until Piazza unloaded a one-out home run in the seventh inning that would extend his runs-batted-in streak to 15 games but that he would see as ''bittersweet'' because ''we lost the game.'' Glavine's was the kind of performance he and Maddux have frequently produced during the Braves' championship seasons, the kind that let would-be dethroners know it wasn't time.

If the Braves' pitching staff is beginning to show cracks, a result of injuries more than any other factor, it is to be remembered that other teams have larger pitching problems and they don't have Glavine and Maddux.

''You look at our problems,'' Schuerholz said, ''and we have these two cornerstones upon which to remedy them. It's pretty comforting. The reality is that someday this comes to an end. The way this roster looked this winter after it was assembled, we didn't anticipate and still don't that it would be this year. We're going through a tough time right now. It's frustrating and it's sometimes aggravating, but it doesn't give me any trepidation about our ability to win.''

The Braves' pitching problems reached the depths yesterday where they had to summon two unheralded pitchers from the minor leagues, Dave Stevens and Ismael Villegas.

''We need somebody with a fresh arm,'' Manager Bobby Cox said. ''We have only one other guy, Jason Marquis. We want him to save the game if we need him to.''

Glavine saw to it that Cox didn't need Stevens or Villegas. Marquis, a rookie from Staten Island, pitched the last two innings and allowed the Mets no hits, sending the team to Atlanta in first place. That is, after all, the home of the Braves.